Improvement in preparing and packing water-colors



Patented May 13,1873.

' inventor. Pei

Atmrneys UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.

EDWARD L. MOLINEUX, OF BROOKLYN, NEW YORK.

IMPROVEMENT IN PREPARING AND PACKING WATER-COLORS.

Specification forming part of Letters Patent No. 138,915, dated May 13,1873; application filed April 19, 1873.

Similar letters of reference indicate corresponding parts.

My invention has for its object to furnish an improved method of preparing and packing, for sale, transportation, and use, colors, or what are known in trade, and with artists, draftsmen, architects, and others, as watercolors. The invention consists in the method of preparing and putting up the colors upon tablets or sheets of paper for painting and toilet purposes, as hereinafter fully described.

Water-colors have for a long time been used and sold in dry cakes of solid masses, and in paste form in pots or tubes. In either of these forms they are liable to the great objection of being broken or cracked, which causes great inconvenience and loss in time and money.

In preparing my improved colors, sheets of card-board or other substance, properly prepared in any of the well-known ways to prevent them from absorbing the colors, are painted with one or several coats of colors in a damp state, prepared with sufficient sizing. As the coats of color dry other coats are added until a mass of color of the desired thickness has been formed. The sheets thus prepared are carefully dried, and cut up into pieces A, of any desired size and form. The sheets, pieces, or tablets of color are then made into portfolios, albums, pocket-books, or other convenient forms, or pasted upon sheets 13, as shown in Figs. 1 and 2.

By this method the artist or person using the colors can have any amount and any shades of colors in a safe, convenient, and portable form, and can have in his pocket ample coloring facilities for any effect or design he may wish to produce at the moment, and without the annoyance of carrying with him cakes of color, palettes, and other materials which are liable to become broken or injured. The supply of colors can be readily renewed by mail or otherwise, without risk or injury in transportation. For the convenience of those using these books or other packages in which the color-tablets are placed, the said books or packages are designed to be so arranged that as soon as a tablet of color is used up it can be removed and another inserted in its place.

In using these tablets the amount of color required is rubbed off with a brush moistened with. water, thus dispensing with the use of slabs or tiles for grinding or rubbing the cake colors.

This method is not confined to colors used in painting pictures, plans, 850., but is equally applicable to colors used for cosmetics and the toilet. This method of preparing water-colors protects the manufacturers, dealers, canvassers, &c., from the loss now experienced in the breaking up in transportation and using of the cakes of water-colors in the form commonly used. This method also enables all water-colors, however expensive in the cake form, to be furnished at a trifling cost, so that artists and others can have and use many very necessary colors which are now out of their reach, owing to their high cost when prepared. in cake form.

Having thus described my invention, I claim as new and desire to secure by Letters Patent- The method of preparing and putting up water-colors in sheets or tablets for painting and toilet uses, substantial] y as herein shown and described.

EDWARD L. MOLINEUX.

Witnesses:

J AMES. '1. GRAHAM, T. B. MOSHER. 

